That time of year thou mayst in me be hard

I strongly identify with the tendency Jon perceives in himself. It operates most fundamentally in my understanding of sexuality: my experience has never included the desire to mate intimately with a female, sexually or otherwise. Over time, this led to an implicit tendency to think of women as asexual creatures. I am a male, and my experience of sexuality is that males -- and only males, with very few exceptions -- are sexually exciting. I honestly don't think it was until I came out to myself as gay around age 14, that it occurred to me that girls and women could be capable of sexual attraction. There had never been any need to think of them as sexual beings in my male-attracted-to-males worldview. To this day, it remains an intellectual understanding, not a visceral one.

Gender identity and sexuality are of course different, but they're not unrelated. I wonder to what extent the close connection for Jon and me (and other gay men?) between sexual energy and socialization among the genders is related, causally or otherwise, to gay identity.

In honor of the rite of spring...

... Which comes on the 21st, technically, but what the hell.

I've remarked on this before, but I don't think that I've ever actually written about it, this strange dichotomy in my character: on the one hand, I very much consider myself a feminist, i.e., I firmly believe in the equality of the sexes in all areas, political, social, athletic, etc. On the other hand, I notice in myself a definite tendency to discount women, on some level, as unimportant.

This, of course, does not operate with any of the women I consider close friends or family, but rather with women as a "species," if you will. My theory is that I tend to ignore women in my head because I'm not sexually attracted to any of them.

To me, sex is such a basic component of what it means to be human that it runs through every interpersonal interaction I have, if only as potential energy that need not necessarily be converted into action. I enjoy interactions with men so much precisely because of that potential, because whether it's acknowledged or not, we're connecting on what's perhaps the most basic level available to two human beings. With women, the discourse is purely mental-- words and deeds that, while they technically involve the body no less, are nevertheless missing that spark I find so essential.

I find myself wondering if this same impulse isn't at the root of most misogyny, in the end-- cisgendered men feel that spark when interacting with women, but, not seeing them as equals for whatever reason, give themselves entirely over to the sexual impulse without considering the higher forces at work in the object of their desire. Really, such a process is just the reverse of the process I notice in myself-- a process I'm trying to alter, since when I'm under its influence, I'm really no better than if I were viewing women purely as sex objects.

(This somewhat incoherent post brought to you by Bark/Bite, who made me think. Read his stuff, it's quite good.)